Surf Anglers Rescue Tangled Shark In Delaware

You can see the scar under the net where it has cut into the sharks back.

A friend of mine was surf fishing yesterday at 3Rs. He was talking to his neighbor when one of the guy’s kids said “Dad you have something on your rod”. The neighbor says to his kids, “No there isn’t we hardly ever catch fish”.

Walt McGrellis … “I said dude you might want to check your rod. He looked behind him and the rod was bent to the sand, eventually he pulled in about a six foot shark. I helped him with it, since he obviously wasn’t expecting to catch something like this. I know to keep the shark in the water. We got knee deep to cut the line, when we noticed there was something across the top of the shark. It was an old piece of net or rope cutting into the shark. We moved it into the surf line and saw that this old piece of net was wrapped up in its pectoral fins and cut into the fins. One piece even looked grown over. There was a large scar across the top of the sharks head under the tangle of net. I lifted the net, we cut off the pieces, and let the shark go as fast as possible. I hope it helped out the shark.

Glad these guys took the time to help that shark and did it the right way, keeping it as wet as possible to be able to safely cut the old net from out of the pectoral fins. They couldn’t cut the net with the shark moving around in over a foot of water, it wasn’t safe and they had to get that net piece off. No telling how long it had been stuck on that shark, eventually the net tangle would have killed the shark.

On a side note … this is how you take a picture of a shark you caught in the surf. You have someone else take the picture while you are working the shark to release it. Posing with the shark constitutes possession and could get you an expensive ticket, according to DNREC. We don’t make the rules, we just follow them. The interpretation of the rule … in a manner that is safest for the angler and the shark … is where the confusion happens.